


Lodestone

by morrezela



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Child Abuse, Other, Prostitution, Slavery, Unicorns, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 08:42:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen is a unicorn, trapped in a circus cage. Jared is the human young man who needs his help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lodestone

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: There are triggers in this including physical abuse, slavery, attempted non-consensual underage sex, the selling of souls and children, goring, dismemberment, trampling, and implied torture. Also, there are mentions of prostitution.
> 
> If you look at it a certain way, it has potential future J2. But the work is Gen.
> 
> All mistakes you find are my own.

A clinking sound was what brought Jensen out of his slumber. A gentle tink, tink, tink of something metal tapping against the bars of his cage, it would’ve been musical if it hadn’t been so discordant in its tone.

He opened one green eye to glare at whatever jailer had come to disturb his slumber, but the other eye opened of its own accord when an unfamiliar face looked back at him.

“They make you pay for the show,” Jensen growled hoping to scare the young man away. Technically, they did charge admission, but Jensen knew that they’d been selling the tickets to see him at a discount lately because of too many complaints.

When people paid to see a unicorn, they didn’t pay to see him in his human form. Jensen had made certain not to even think about shifting back to his other form once he managed to work enough of his magic around the heavy wardings on his cage to change to his human one in the first place.

Despite Jensen’s trickery, the circus was still making good money off him. He was unnaturally beautiful and calming even in his human shape. Without his magic to mask the mark on his forehead where his horn would be, he was easily identifiable as a unicorn. It was sadly clear that Jensen was not a fake. That still kept money coming in even if it came at reduced rates.

But as debasing and humiliating as the situation was, Jensen knew that it would eventually become worse. News would travel fast and far about the circus with the real unicorn. It wouldn’t be long before Jensen’s jailers were either coerced or forced into selling him to somebody with far more power and far fewer scruples.

“Is it true?” the man finally whispered, just as Jensen was about to close his eyes and go back to his uncomfortable sleep.

“That I am a unicorn? Ask the barker in the morning. I’m sure he’ll tell you a far grander tale than I,” Jensen grumbled as he made a production of tugging the horse blanket he’d been given to sleep with tighter around himself to show his intention to go back to his slumber.

“Is it true that you protect virgins?” the man asked.

“I’m hardly in the position to protect anybody right now, boy,” Jensen told him, although the inquiry caught his attention.

The cage he was in was cursed and warded and bound so tightly that Jensen could barely remember that he was something more most days. But he still had access to his some of power if he chased it quickly enough, and the jolt he sent towards the young man confirmed his purity.

“No, I know. I just… If you were out, would you protect them? Or is that only a fable?”

“It is a good deal more complicated than that,” Jensen told him as he pushed himself into a sitting position, pulling the rough blanket up around his shoulders. “You are rather old to still be a virgin. I would assume that this is because you do not need another to protect your virtue.”

The young man blushed. “I do not ask for myself.”

Jensen tilted his head curiously. “No?”

“I… My sister, she is to be given to the Baron of Westfield not a fortnight from now.”

Jensen sighed and shook his head. “These things are the way of man, and while not always the happiest of occasions, they are the way they are for a reason. To become a rich man’s wife, even if she does not love him, is not a bad thing even if it is not good.”

“No,” the human shook his head vigorously, his brown hair flying with the force. “You do not understand. She is to be given to him as a, a replacement for me. I was… displeasing to his Lordship and returned to my parents with their debt tripled and a hangman’s noose over their heads. He took my father’s left hand as payment last month, and he died from the infection. My mother starved to death not three days ago. She, she thought it best to send my sister to the Baron, for at least she’ll be fed but…”

“But?” Jensen prompted gently, his heart stinging with pain.

“My sister has not yet seen eleven summers,” the man told him. “The Baron is wicked and angry. I cannot even work the quarries for the slurs he has put on my name. The scarring he put on my body keeps me from selling it in the brothels. Not that I would fetch much more than a few copper coins for my mouth, but…”

“Enough!” Jensen orders, his temper snarling with the need to slaughter and defend. “I have no desire to be sick within this infernal cage.”

“I have nowhere else to go, no one else to ask,” the man continued, his voice soft and hopeless.

“I’m caged, young one. I cannot help you. Even if I could, where would you go? How would you feed your sister? Would you run to another town or village and whore yourself there, teaching her the very thing you seek to save her from?”

Tears formed in the man’s eyes. “Please, I cannot… You do not know what it was like to… he punished me for being too large. My only crime was that my, my thing was bigger than his, even when soft. When he finally returned me, unused and undesirable, he demanded that my sister be sent before she grew too large for him to find pleasure in her form. I, I would rather starve in the woods than let him touch her.”

Jensen felt his insides churn as his body responded instinctively to the story. His whole being revolted against the concept of turning down the plea of the pure on behalf of one even more innocent. It was like fire was ripping him in two, but there was nowhere for that power to go any more than there was a haven for the man in front of him to escape to.

“I would aide you, if I could,” Jensen offered.

“You swear it?” the young man asked, his eyes lighting with possibly overzealous hope.

Warning bells clanged inside of Jensen’s head. “Little one, what did you do?” he asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“There was a witch up the mountain. I… she would have stolen my sister for her own purposes had I bartered for her help, but I didn’t tell her of my scheme. Virgin’s blood is powerful in magic, or so I’m told.”

“You sold yourself to her,” Jensen said, his own blood running cold at the thought. Defiled sexually or not, the young man would not stay pure for long with evil magic living off his lifeblood.

“I heard that the circus coming to town had a real unicorn trapped in a cage with a thousand locks and no key. So I said to myself, ‘Jared, if there is any who would save your sister, it would be a unicorn,’” the young man said instead of answering Jensen’s question.

“You went to forge yourself a key,” Jensen said flatly.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“I cannot allow you to sacrifice yourself to free me. It would be an anathema to me to allow something so precious to be defiled,” Jensen told him.

No unicorn had ever cried over the loss of a virgin who loved their partner, nor did they cry over those who were caught up in foolish lust for it was part of humanity. There was joy in seeing the innocent grow into adults who could care for and defend both themselves and each other.

Flesh, after all, was just flesh. Breeding was something that all life did, even unicorns in their glades would mount and have foals. It was what nature intended. But innocence and purity was something else, something far greater and harder to preserve. That this Jared would allow it to be burned out of him with the vitriol of black magic was a disturbing thought.

“But I am not doing it for you. I care only about saving my sister,” Jared argued back.

“Your sister is ten and cannot raise herself. She’ll be cast into an orphan’s home or left to beg on the streets.”

“Couldn’t you take her with you to some place safe?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Jensen told him.

Jared glared at him. “Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t,” Jensen reasoned. “I cannot travel with a human astride me for any length of time before they will be… infected for lack of a better term. They will become inhuman. If not for this cage, I would already have given gifts to those who bound me in here. They would be horrible, twisted creatures for certain, their evil magnified by my magic.”

“And the good hearted?” Jared asked.

“I know what you are thinking, and even if she has a heart of gold, she will only become a different sort of beast’s prey. I would have to take her to our fields and glens and keep her there. To return to humanity would be impossible for her. Surely you have heard stories of those virgins who gazed upon us too long? They never rid themselves of the want to be near us again, and yet they attract the affections of many for the essence of us left on them. They live a life without love,” Jensen told him.

“She and I are both doomed to that anyway,” Jared argued.

“You don’t know that. If you take her, go to the forest and run, then you might have a chance to…”

His well intentioned words were interrupted by the sound of metal twisting and shrieking under unnatural forces. Jensen’s instinct was to cover himself, but he didn’t because he could not take his eyes off of Jared. The young man was screaming and shrieking, dark tears dripping from his eyes, and Jensen had the sinking feeling that what darkened them was the man’s own blood.

The magic that held Jensen’s cage together was dark and twisted, and what unbound it in such a fashion was far worse. It made him seethe in anger and fury that such a thing had been done to a soul so protective and selfless. His anger burned through him, shifting his form to its hooved state, horn glistening dark red with the need for vengeance, his coat giving way to the color as well. His hooves turned black from their grief and hatred because of what had just been lost.

The villagers would later say that a living flame had thundered through their town, a devil horse sent by hell itself to claim the life of one of its own. He supposed that he couldn’t blame them for mistaking him as such. Humans had the tendency to think of unicorns in their placid state, white and peaceful. So few ever realized that their bodies shifted color with their mood, but then again, Jensen’s people much preferred it that way.

When he finally made it inside the opulent residence and skewered the Baron, the human’s vile blood mixed in with Jensen’s coat as the last of his life drained from his body. Jensen couldn’t bring himself to leave the man other than he found him: naked on his chamber pot.

Jensen did make himself bathe before searching for the whereabouts of Jared’s sister, but every time that he shifted to his hooved form, his coat would burn angry and red. The child would not need to see such fury, so he walked about on two feet after convincing a passing peddler that handing over some clothing to the ‘Hell Spawned Horse’ would be in his best interests.

The townspeople were disgusting in how helpful they were to a complete stranger seeking out an innocent child. If Jensen were a different sort of creature, he might have burned the whole village to the ground with his loathing for them.

When he found the girl, she was mute and passive like her entire world was gone from her, and she cared not what happened to the shell that had been left behind. She didn’t protest when he picked her up into his arms, and Jensen worried that she could transform into something very ugly indeed if she had no will to continue, especially at so young of an age.

Her emptiness could turn her into a creature of want, taking souls or blood or even just possessions.

But he couldn’t blame her any more than he could blame her brother for what he had done to try to save her. Jensen's own heart hated him every time that he tried to think of other things to do with the child than keep her with him.

It would be better for her to be an orphan than it would be to allow his magic to get inside her and latch on to something dark. Broken humans could heal, but magical creatures were too dangerous to try to reason with. Jensen knew this, But every time that he tried to decide what was best for Jared’s sister, he was plagued with the memory of Jared’s entreaties. He couldn’t bring himself to go against the young man’s wishes.

It was on the third day of his travels away from the village that Jensen realized that he was going to have to do something about Jared. He hadn’t made it far because he was traveling on two feet. His hooved form was still roiling with the wrath that had grown in him, and exposing Jared’s sister to that would certainly bring doom down upon the child’s head. That sort of desire for destruction had to be channeled in the correct ways, and even the most righteous of humans had been known to falter under the sway of their own temperaments.

A child as scared and lonely as she was would almost certainly react poorly to the feel of Jensen’s magic in such a state.

More worrisome was that he was still in such a frenzy to begin with. His being cried out for vengeance. While he had rescued one of the pure, he had completely failed another. Jared’s very soul was being burned for enchantments. Though the choice was the younger man’s, the reason behind it was self-sacrificing. Other unicorns would let it go. They would mourn it, but remind Jensen that it was the young human’s choice.

But when a man had no options, did that make saying ‘yes’ a choice?

Jensen couldn not say that he knew. His guilt and desire for vengeance roared at him, caged up like a lion waiting to be unleashed.

He knew. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

Killing the witch seemed like a logical first step, so he put the practically catatonic girl in the middle of a fairy circle and admonished the pixies to leave her be while he attended to some official unicorn business. Then he found the witch’s hut and proceeded to trample her under his blackened hooves, her blood not fit to touch his horn.

Jared’s limp body was in the back woodshed, kept there like a tool and not even a very well kept one. The sight made Jensen’s coloring finally shift. Grey streaked down his sides like raindrops as his pelt gave way to sorrow over the sight of the wayward hero.

The young man was close to death, and the compassionate thing to do might have been to let him meet his end. But Jensen had never seen Jared want consideration for himself. What he wanted was what was best for his sister, and what was best for her was having somebody to hold on to.

It was painful at first, being around somebody who had so little left in him. Jensen would not lie by saying that he felt comfortable or even right in the choice that he made to bring Jared back from his moment of death.

There were many nights that he would lay on the ground, wide awake watching Jared and his sister. He would wonder if he was going to have to kill the both of them and would argue with himself that he should leave them before they became any further infected with his magic. He could never make himself go.

Then, one night, Jared wasn’t as far into his slumber as Jensen had thought him to be. He caught Jensen staring.

“Why are you grey? I thought unicorns were white,” Jared had asked softly as he reached out to touch Jensen’s nose. He rarely transformed out of his hooved form now that he was no longer a frightening specter of flame.

His grief over his human charges’ lives wasn’t uplifting, but it was unlikely to cause them any additional harm when they already had so much loss in their lives. Staying in his hooved form kept them safer in the forests, so it was a logical choice to stay in his stronger form.

“There are many things you do not understand, Jared,” Jensen told him.

Jared shivered a little as he always did when Jensen spoke into his head, but he didn’t pull away. “We are traveling in circles,” he said instead of pursuing his first line of questioning.

That much was true, but how Jared knew that was an interesting question given that Jensen had been very careful in the paths that he had taken them along.

“I’ve always had a good internal compass,” Jared said as if he could read Jensen’s thoughts.

“It is very good if you have already guessed our path,” Jensen told him honestly. The forest that he had led them to was vast. Many an experienced hunter had been known to get lost in it, especially if one of the unicorns wasn’t around to keep an eye on the sprites and interfere with their devious plans.

“I think you miss my meaning,” Jared said as he pushed Jensen’s forelock away from his horn to trace the star symbol that surrounded its base.

“Jared, I do not doubt that your heart was earnest and your motivations true. But I cannot bring you to our lands, not without knowing for certain. Until then, we wander,” Jensen said firmly.

Jared smiled at that and shook his head. “I could die tomorrow, and I would die knowing that I am not dying on the worst day of my life. I care not if we travel these woods for five decades.”

“Then what is it that you need me to say?” Jensen asked.

“In my dreams, as a child, I saw a star that was never in the sky,” Jared told him as his fingers danced around Jensen’s horn again. “I held on to that like a beacon of hope. Surely I was shown that sign for a reason, and I was. I was begging in the street when I heard people talking of your beauty and the strange mark on your forehead. I hadn’t the money to get into the circus, so I broke in to see you for myself. When I saw my star, I knew that I had been guided to the right place. So I went to the witch, and I bartered with her for the spell to free you so that you would come and rescue my sister. I never imagined that you would come for me too.”

Jensen felt a shiver run down his spine at the words. “Jared…”

Jared interrupted him with, “I just wanted you to know, before I lost the courage to tell you.”

“I will always come for you,” Jensen swore, his insides churning with the certainty of it. Fate rarely showed her hands to mortal humans. A vision of the future was sacred.

Jared looked a little teary eyed at that, and his hand slipped from Jensen’s head. “You don’t need to do that,” he told Jensen with a yawn as he shifted to lay back down for sleep.

Jensen waited for the young man to fall asleep before he answered, “I think that I do.”


End file.
